[MD] Platt and Arlo

[Paul Turner]

Platt, Arlo,

I copy some text from this article:
http://www.westernbuddhistreview.com/vol1/conditionality.html

....which may be relevant to your discussion.  It's an article about
Buddhist conditionality.  The full article is quite long, some of it good,
some of it not so good - in my opinion.  

But anyway, for what it's worth:

"THE SEA OF CONDITIONS is vast - infinitely deep: unbounded in all
directions. It contains nothing less than the past and present of the entire
universe. All 'matter' is contained in it - all cells, chemicals, particles
and waves. It contains all of human history: all information, all ideas. All
these ideas, cells, chemicals, and bits of information are themselves
constantly changing and re-arranging as they flow together in an infinitely
vast array of different patterns. 

Looking over the surface of the ocean, we can see some of these patterns.
Here the sea is smooth and calm, there it is rippled, in another place it
foams and bubbles. Here it is choppy, there we see waves. In one section of
the sea there are a large number of whirlpools - vortices of different
sizes, different shapes. Each vortex is unique, each has its own
characteristics. Some are larger than others, some are deeper than others,
some are vigorous, some are languid. They come into being, subsist for a
time, and then disappear as the sea flows and changes, in constant motion. 

Each vortex represents an individual human life. We come into being, take
shape from the conditions available to us: the cells, chemicals, and
biological matter and all the other conditions of our lives give shape to
our being. Different fragments of the ideas of Marx, Christ, Thoreau, the
Beatles, Rousseau, Walt Witman, Raymond Chandler, Freud, Picasso, Adam
Smith, Jefferson, Keats, Einstein, the advertising industry, Shakespeare,
Rembrandt, Henry Ford, Chaucer, Ian Fleming, and the Buddha drift in this
Sea of Conditions. They flow into our vortex, give it shape, flow down and
flow out. The history of our parents and our culture, flows in, flows down
and flows out. All our inherited ideas of good and bad; all the cells which
replicate and die in our bodies; all the viruses which effect our health;
all the colours, shapes, sounds, smells, tastes and ideas we ever
experience, flow in, flow down and flow out. All our memories, sensations,
emotions, desires and actions flow in to the vortex, shape it and flow out. 

In reality we are not ultimately separate from the rest of the Sea of
Conditions, from all the vast immensity of life itself. But we don't see it
like that. 'Human kind cannot bear very much reality'. In order to get by
from day to day, to get on with the apparently urgent business of survival,
we narrow the scope of our vision to more manageable proportions. 

Grabbing onto some conditions as they drift by, pushing away others, we each
create an apparently workable ego-identity for ourselves and then spend the
rest of our lives in a desperate attempt to preserve that identity. 

Everything that lives is subject to decay. All conditioned things are
impermanent. To be alive is to change. Without change we would be absolutely
inert. But the un-Enlightened human condition is to fight change every inch
of the way."